LONDON (CelebrityAccess) — Radiohead's Thom Yorke has released his second solo album "Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes" directly through the filesharing program BitTorrent with a $6 dollar price tag.
Yorke has been openly critical of the traditional distribution system for music and Radiohead was one of the first major artists to try alternatives when they released their 2007 album "In Rainbows" directly to fans with a 'pay what you want' model.
Yorke's previous solo effort, 2006's "Eraser" was released on XL Recordings and netted Yorke a nominations for both a Grammy and a Mercury Prize. The album charted at number 3 in the UK in its first week, and number 2 in the North America.
In a statement announcing the release of "Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes", Yorke wrote:
As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record.
The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files..
The files can be anything, but in this case is an ‘album’.
It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around …
If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.
Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.
Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.
If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.
The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.
It’s a self-contained embeddable shop front…
The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network.
Oh yes and it’s called
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.
Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich
